A Battle Measured in the Blink of an Eye

Left unchecked, the nafs becomes like a spoiled child who understands no language but its own appetite: I want it, I want it, I want it. A person may reach forty-five or fifty years of age without ever having undergone any training of the nafs, recognising no limitation, wanting only to satisfy its desires — for food, for sleep, for intimacy, for status, ḥubb al-riyāsah, for accumulating wealth, ḥubb jamʿ al-māl — an unending, bottomless pursuit. Many pass their whole lives caught in this without ever recognising it, yet Allah warns that this is not why anyone was created: this world is not given for enjoyment alone, but as a test, of which the nafs is the substance — and the result of passing it is ultimately Allah's pleasure and Paradise.

Why would Allah grant Paradise to one who is not purified, or to one who has disobeyed Him throughout life? The activity of the nafs is reflected, as in a dish or a mirror, upon the heart, a person's centre of intelligence — which is why Allah says:

On that day, nothing avails except the sound heart brought before Allah. The struggle against the nafs must therefore be constant. When the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) was returning from a military campaign, he is reported to have described it as a return from a lesser battle to a greater one^* — the greater struggle, the greatest jihād, being the struggle against one's own desires. To underline exactly this point, he would supplicate to the One who turns hearts, asking that his own heart be kept firm upon Allah's religion and obedience to Him, and that he not be left to his own nafs even for the space of a single blink, or less. That such damage can be done to a person in less time than a blink of an eye is not a matter to be treated lightly, nor a theory — it is the very reason every prophet was sent, the reason — by Allah — Muhammad Muṣṭafā (peace be upon him) was sent, the reason the Qur'an itself was sent: so that people might come to their senses and refuse to yield to this beast within, the nafs al-ammārah.